^^^ intresting. So since this "wound" topic has had a number of replies and suggestions, I'll be open about what I'm doing. This would all be public anyway. Here's an excerpt from my rules:

--Happiness--

Dwarves are a touchy lot; prone to lashing out in a rage if they become too unhappy. Each player has a “happiness level” of 2. Different things can happen that will reduce their happiness, and if it reaches zero the player throws a tantrum and attacks the other players. For every tantrum, a random player will be given 2 extra “wound” votes. A player can be hit by only one tantrum a night. The next day, the tantruming dwarf will return to “happiness level” of 2. All wounds will be announced in the beginning day post.

Things that reduce 1 happiness include:going hungrysobering upsleeping without a bedbeing tied for the lynchbeing attackedbeing saved from the maul or a vig shot

A further explanation to the booze, food, and bed references:

In game, there will be an option for the players to raise the happiness cap to 3. In the DF computer game, keeping your fortress drunk, fed, and well rested is very important. In my game, I'm modeling this as players consuming 1 unit of beer, consuming 1 unit of food, and sleeping in a bed every night. Each night, every player can choose to grow food (produces 3 food), brew beer (produces 3 beer), or craft a bed ... or do something else and get a special power. All the food/beer/beds go into a common stockpile, and at the beginning of the day I'll announce what's in the stockpile. If there isn't enough to go around, then the people who go without are randomly selected.

If you go 3 nights without food you die. So, no food on night 2, no food on night 3, you die at the end of day 4. Going without booze a 2nd night in a row cancels night actions, and they stay unavailable until you get more beer. And yes, I've made provision for the possibility that everyone goes 2 nights without beer. Going without a bed only decreases happiness, and unlike booze and food, beds are persistent.

Nobody has to make any food/beer/beds, but if nobody does it then the fortress will descend into a spiral of madness and death.

---

So this whole giant long winded diversion is a response to okaros' comments about wounds locking actions. In this game I don't think I'll do that because the starvation/sobering up mechanism is intended to fill that role.

How many beds will we start with? Also, will rotating beds be enough to keep dwarves from tantruming? Because it seems like even if food and beer are taken care of, beds are likely to crash happiness alone.

Admetus wrote:How many beds will we start with? Also, will rotating beds be enough to keep dwarves from tantruming? Because it seems like even if food and beer are taken care of, beds are likely to crash happiness alone.

I'm thinking around 1/3 number of starting players, maybe more or less depending on how many people are in it. We'll also start with 1 nights worth of beer and food. Beds go into a sort of common barracks/bedroom, and don't disappear upon use or player death. As long as there's a free bed available at all, the dwarf is happy. Incidentally, the barracks/bedroom is just a conceptual thing; there's no map with a "bedroom" location on it. Likewise, crafting a bed is just sending me a PM saying "I want to make a bed tonight as my one action"

I'm expecting that getting beds built is only going to be a concern for the first night or two, given the dwindling player count. By mid game there should be a lot of empty beds

Admetus wrote:How many beds will we start with? Also, will rotating beds be enough to keep dwarves from tantruming? Because it seems like even if food and beer are taken care of, beds are likely to crash happiness alone.

I'm thinking around 1/3 number of starting players, maybe more or less depending on how many people are in it. We'll also start with 1 nights worth of beer and food. Beds go into a sort of common barracks/bedroom, and don't disappear upon use or player death. As long as there's a free bed available at all, the dwarf is happy. Incidentally, the barracks/bedroom is just a conceptual thing; there's no map with a "bedroom" location on it. Likewise, crafting a bed is just sending me a PM saying "I want to make a bed tonight as my one action"

I'm expecting that getting beds built is only going to be a concern for the first night or two, given the dwindling player count. By mid game there should be a lot of empty beds

Admetus wrote:How will wolves figure in on work sharing? Can they get power roles? Because if it's not clear who's working and who's powering up, I imagine the wolves won't do much working.

Ah, but much like playing traitor in the Shadows over Camelot board game the wolves will at least have to *look* like they're helping, otherwise they'll easily stand out as being wolves. They'll have to help, just maybe not always in an optimal fashion...

re: wounds: So the current idea is if you're randomly hit by a tantrum'ing dwarf you get 2 penalty votes on you? Hrm. One alternative to the penalty votes might be that a wounded dwarf consumes an extra unit of food and/or beer that day. This would make throwing a tantrum bad not just for the bystanders who get hit but also for the group as a whole since it diminishes the available supplies. That would serve as an incentive to *not* deliberately throw tantrums all the time, since deliberate misbehavior would likely earn you a lynching.

I kind of assume Okaros is out to backstab me until proven otherwise. - DOM

Admetus wrote:How will wolves figure in on work sharing? Can they get power roles? Because if it's not clear who's working and who's powering up, I imagine the wolves won't do much working.

Wolves work and consume the same as anyone else. I'm not entirely thrilled with that, but if it were otherwise, it'd be easy to find them mechanically ... is someone skipping meals\beer without negative effects? Then they're a wolf.

Wolves can get power roles, but most of the roles are intended to be only moderately powerful, and the better ones are highly limited in numbers. For instance, there's only one vig shot out there. Hence the reason that players might be tempted to let someone else take care of food/beer while they rush to get the good roles.

There are special roles that will let you know who did what during the night, but those are limited and in general people are not told what happened.

Okaros wrote:re: wounds: So the current idea is if you're randomly hit by a tantrum'ing dwarf you get 2 penalty votes on you? Hrm. One alternative to the penalty votes might be that a wounded dwarf consumes an extra unit of food and/or beer that day. This would make throwing a tantrum bad not just for the bystanders who get hit but also for the group as a whole since it diminishes the available supplies. That would serve as an incentive to *not* deliberately throw tantrums all the time, since deliberate misbehavior would likely earn you a lynching.

Admetus wrote:How will wolves figure in on work sharing? Can they get power roles? Because if it's not clear who's working and who's powering up, I imagine the wolves won't do much working.

Ah, but much like playing traitor in the Shadows over Camelot board game the wolves will at least have to *look* like they're helping, otherwise they'll easily stand out as being wolves. They'll have to help, just maybe not always in an optimal fashion...

But unless I misunderstood, there's no report of who did what (which would get the specials mauled). I'm sure you've noticed how well grand attempts to coordinate actions go on this board. It's most likely at least half of the players won't even report on what they are doing regardless of faction or peer pressure.

Wolves who want to grab up all the good roles can blend in easily with this group of players, by simply keeping their actions private.

twdog wrote:

Okaros wrote:re: wounds: So the current idea is if you're randomly hit by a tantrum'ing dwarf you get 2 penalty votes on you? Hrm. One alternative to the penalty votes might be that a wounded dwarf consumes an extra unit of food and/or beer that day. This would make throwing a tantrum bad not just for the bystanders who get hit but also for the group as a whole since it diminishes the available supplies. That would serve as an incentive to *not* deliberately throw tantrums all the time, since deliberate misbehavior would likely earn you a lynching.

I like this a lot, so that's what I'm going with.

If you have wounded dwarves consume more resources, I think you're likely to have that spiral out of control at some point. A shortage will cause a worse shortage which will cause a complete wipe-out of all resources as the entire fort goes "unhappy" at the same time.

fwiw, I had asked for a sanity check on this game in the f5 thread, so I'm glad some of this is getting hashed out here.

---

Admetus wrote:But unless I misunderstood, there's no report of who did what (which would get the specials mauled). I'm sure you've noticed how well grand attempts to coordinate actions go on this board. It's most likely at least half of the players won't even report on what they are doing regardless of faction or peer pressure.

Right, no public action reports so that human specials don't get mauled automatically.

As for lack of coordination failures goes, that’s partially the point. One of the themes of this game is “tragedy of the commons.” If everyone acts in their own interests every night, then they're all doomed, wolf and human dwarf and night creature alike. Of course, they could easily side step all that by doing nothing but make beer and food every night, but then no one is getting any special roles. Some, but not too much, self-interest is what’s called for.

One of the reasons that there are no night action lists is to make it easier for people to work together. They don't have to think about rounds or locations. They have 12 options for their one night action, but they all basically fall into the category of “helps the group” or “helps me.”

That said, watch everyone starve to death anyway

Admetus wrote:Wolves who want to grab up all the good roles can blend in easily with this group of players, by simply keeping their actions private.

I'm not sure how how this gives a special advantage to the wolves, because they need food and beer too. If all the wolves try for powers then they run a real risk of starvation, given that at least some humans will do the same. Is there something I'm missing?

Admetus wrote:If you have wounded dwarves consume more resources, I think you're likely to have that spiral out of control at some point. A shortage will cause a worse shortage which will cause a complete wipe-out of all resources as the entire fort goes "unhappy" at the same time.

I'd like to point out that tantrum spirals is a classic way for a fortress to die. That'd be a very dwarfy way to end the game! That said, I don't want that to be an inevitable outcome.

To help compensate, trader caravans will show up periodically as a daily event. When they arrive, they'll have food\beer\beds\and a weak power available for trade. Players can trade away their existing power\food\beer\beds. It's one trade per player, and the traders don't have unlimited trade stocks. While I do realise that this lets the players can screw themselves by trading away their necessities, I wanted to open the option for the players to trade supplies in the case where there's an excess of one but a shortage of the other. The traders can be asked to bring extra of a category next time they arrive, and it's up to a secondary day vote on what that extra will be. Player caused events might delay the traders, and they players will be warned if their actions will delay the traders.

twdog wrote:I'm not sure how how this gives a special advantage to the wolves, because they need food and beer too. If all the wolves try for powers then they run a real risk of starvation, given that at least some humans will do the same. Is there something I'm missing?

I keep rambling in my response to this. Let's try the most edited down version.

If the fort succeeds or fails together, but no individual penalties are handed out for non-cooperation -- why should the wolves not be as selfish as possible to hoard powers? They're on even footing with the humans either way, and one approach gets them special powers (and denies them from the humans), which is the only thing that matters to the wolves.

I see what you're saying, but I'm not sure how to define "non-cooperation" in this context, unless people's night choices are public. There isn't an option for staying in the server room explicitly wasting time.

The "penalty" is really "everyone loses" ... but that might be too hardcore. Especially because in the end game, the group near defeat might choose to crash the fort just to deny the other side victory.

Let me think about this.

---

edit:

Off the top of my head ... perhaps I could reveal who worked for the group and who worked for themselves, but not what they did. Hence if the wolves know that, for instance, 9 humans have power roles, then they can assume most of them are lesser powers but a few, or even none, might be greater powers.

This would let the humans know who isn't contributing to the fort's stockpiles at all, without giving the wolves a list of who has the best stuff

Maybe instead of determining who doesn't get food or drink or bed randomly, you could say that a person who worked on that job that night will be the first to be satisfied? If you made a bed, you'll get it the first night -- if you made 3 booze for the fort, you won't go without it even if others do.

Then going back to issuing penalty votes for not having your basics covered, and that means a crashing fort will have self interest motivate players to fix the situation. Also, if you have a little pad to eat into, you can make an attempt at a power without being ratted out by having penalty votes, but if you are constantly trying to get powers, this will become apparent over time after you've run out of buffer. "The fort wasn't completely out of goods. Clearly Admetus has been trying to get a power nights 1-3 if he's already showing penalty votes, because doing anything at all for the fort would probably keep him out of penalty range."

Realizing this is dwarf fortress, and that it has it's own mantra, I'm not a big fan of Everyone Loses. Maybe change it so that the wolves are *trying* to sabotage the fortress, and "everyone loses" is the victory condition *instead* of parity (granted, parity probably = everyone loses anyhow, I'm not sure?). Wolf-special powers could be focused on locking someone out of the kitchen, sabatoging a bed, or watering down a barrel of beer, etc., etal.

How do you handle a giant stockpile of food (20 people x 10 days = 200 days of food, but 3 days later, there are only 10 people, so do they have ~140 units of food left or do they have 7 days of food left?), etc., etal.

I'm frowning at the idea of secondary votes for traders and stuff. You're getting into too-much-player-mechanics a bit there - we have yet to have a normal TWG where everyone votes every day. I would try to keep it as close as possible to (vote + night action + power use).

Random thoughts here, not a lot of time to digest the full discussion.

Admetus wrote:Maybe instead of determining who doesn't get food or drink or bed randomly, you could say that a person who worked on that job that night will be the first to be satisfied? If you made a bed, you'll get it the first night -- if you made 3 booze for the fort, you won't go without it even if others do.

Then going back to issuing penalty votes for not having your basics covered, and that means a crashing fort will have self interest motivate players to fix the situation. Also, if you have a little pad to eat into, you can make an attempt at a power without being ratted out by having penalty votes, but if you are constantly trying to get powers, this will become apparent over time after you've run out of buffer. "The fort wasn't completely out of goods. Clearly Admetus has been trying to get a power nights 1-3 if he's already showing penalty votes, because doing anything at all for the fort would probably keep him out of penalty range."

I really like this idea, but I would stretch it a bit further so that among the players that didn't produce that good that night, the players that have produced it previously get secondary priority based on how much of that good they produced. The dwarf throwing the tantrum could also get penalty votes on himself (in addition to the penalty votes on a random dwarf as a result of the tantrum) because the Sheriff catches him and administers a beating as punishment. I assume that dwarves that throw tantrums will clearly be noted in the day thread, so now you know who's being dead weight and they already have penalty votes to get that wagon rolling. This would serve as a very strong incentive to make goods, but it still wouldn't be anywhere near a mandate.

The above in combination with a running tally of food/beer/beds could result in some VERY interesting strategy discussions for the wolves. To make things even more interesting, you could allow any dwarf that gets a special power to retain that special power every night until he produces something, which could make skipping production worth the risk for some humans as well.

Under this system, the wolves could fish for powers all day as long as enough food and beer are being produced, but the safest way for them to avoid appearing selfish is to produce goods in cycles to remain hidden. This matches the core TWG flavor where the wolves are trying to blend in with the humans, and let foolish humans look more like wolves than they do in order to bring them closer to parity.

I agree with the last thing. Having a daily upkeep to maintain each day sounds like trying to force Dwarf Fortress mechanics into the game.

If you put powers available like a carrot, players will go for the carrot, especially if they are restricted. Why build beds? Just hang in there until more people die. Or does building a bed guarantee I will always have a bed? If beds are few, who decides who gets to sleep? Dibs? Random? Is that an action?

Same for food and drinks. It would be unfair to make food and then just don't get food cuz of random. What if I keep growing food but I randomly get selected to not have food for three days cuz few else grew food?

It also sounds ironic that we are killing fellow dwarves when we need that manpower to survive.

About beer, what if a player chooses to go for roles every night just to lock out people from getting them? Yeah, I might not be able to use powers, but neither will anyone else get that power. And since the tantrum doesn't really penalize me, well no big deal. Hey, it might even penalize the wolf ! It's justified regardless of faction, since the only one you are sure of is of yourself. Players will be selfish.

I think there is a bit too many random mechanics in play. Randomly get food, beer, bed or hit by tantrums. Maybe it can be streamlined to be less mechanical and cumbersome. Random results do not fit well into a TWG game.

Probably have the tantrum affect the player himself. Or getting too many powers makes you have a tantrum. At the same time, doing a bed, getting food or drinks could be put into the same pool. Want to increase resources? Don't go for a power tonight. It will be like if you helped make stuff. I don't know. It feels a bit too cumbersome with stats and variables. More mechanics makes the game cumbersome and less motivating of teamwork.

Since these are relatively short games, you need to provide more immediate and conclusive consequences to player behavior. A combination of fear and reward is the best driver for player cooperation.

Ah! And don't forget something very important. Just because it looks good from the outside, it doesn't mean that players will enjoy it. The game might look interesting as a whole, but it might be a burden for its components.

If you made the tantrum penalties mostly/entirely focused on the dwarf throwing the tantrum, maybe you could inflict a happiness loss for selfish acts like getting a power? That would short-circuit most of the "always choose selfish" playstyle without making it completely forbidden.

I kind of assume Okaros is out to backstab me until proven otherwise. - DOM

Okaros wrote:If you made the tantrum penalties mostly/entirely focused on the dwarf throwing the tantrum, maybe you could inflict a happiness loss for selfish acts like getting a power? That would short-circuit most of the "always choose selfish" playstyle without making it completely forbidden.

If you treated getting a power like temporarily becoming a noble, you could easily have a 50% chance of losing happiness because of stupid random noble demands that are impossible to fulfill.

I agree with the tantrum penalties solely focusing on the dwarf, or at least a percentage chance of that. EVERYTHING done via tantrum is illegal, but there's a lot in there that doesn't damage other dwarves. One of those would be destroying a bed, the rest could have other negative implications (including theoretically destroying beer, but destroying food probably goes too far). Anything illegal can result in a beating, so they would always get the penalty votes themselves...but there has to be some sort of negative to the community as a whole or he may not be lynched for doing jack shit.

I would practically insist on resources being prioritized based on who produced that resource on that day and then on prior days. If I know that some bastard player hasn't been producing food the entire game because he threw a tantrum when we were like 5 food short for the second consecutive day, I am lynching that player unless the tantrums are completely harmless to everyone else and he claims Seer.

Plus that gives the wolves some mid- and late-game maul decisions that go beyond "maul whoever's least wolfy," because they could run into serious trouble if players that have heavily prioritized food and beer throughout the game remain alive. In that situation, those players can opt to do nothing and force the other players, including the wolves, to produce that resource since they'll never tantrum until the other players have produced an equal amount of that resource.

Okay, just brainstorming a bit. I'm thinking a Final Destination-style game. For those unfamiliar with the movies (which are oh-so-horrible but oh-so-fun), basically a bunch of people are Supposed To Die in a terrific accident, but thanks to the actions of one person who has seen the event in premonitory dreams, they don't. What follows is Death seeking to collect his due, and everyone who escaped ends up dying anyway.

I'm not going to claim to understand proper Quantum, but there's a quantum element to this, in that any of the Survivors could be the person who had the dreams and prevented the original tragedy. Players will generate a list of the order that people died at the start of the game, which will be use to ultimately determine the True Seer. (There will be some gaps in the list to allow some interactivity once the game starts.)

The Wolf faction does not exist, exactly. One player will be Death, who will choose to kill someone each night. Depending on the total number of players, there will also be one or two "true" survivors, people who weren't going to die in the accident anyway. These people want the Survivors to die so that the timeline can go back to normal and so paradox can be avoided.

Every Survivor will basically have a daily guardian angel action, which they will use to keep their friends safe. Of course, in the Final Destination Universe, trying to help someone invariably leads to them getting killed. I haven't worked it out exactly, but I'm thinking that the people who get "helped" become eligible for killing by Death.

There is no conventional lynch, but instead, the players can team up to try to vanquish Death. If greater than fifty percent of the players can agree on a specific player to kill, they will, but anything less will be ignored.

The game ends when the True Seer is resolved (and then killed), or when Death is eliminated.

Anyhoo, I think rekard has some good points about forcing dwarf fortress mechanics into TWG might be just trying to force a square peg into a round hole. I've been considering what to do here to make it still be in the spirit of TWG, and it may not be really possible. The setting isn't an issue, of course, it's the trying to make the rules "dwarfy." If nothing else, I agree that non-lynch\maul\vig death isn't really that good of an idea.

I don't want to offer players choices that are basically pointless. We've all seen games like that. For instance, games with "morality systems" where picking the "evil" choice has so many negative consequences that no one ever picks it. Why even have a choice if that's what it's like? It's a pointless choice. Likewise, if not crafting beer\food is such a serious problem, then why would you do anything else?

The other part of this, was that while anyone could choose to go for powers instead of food\beer, the truth was that those "available to anyone" powers were deliberately crappy. So what kind of choice is that? Hmm, should I risk game meltdown that will screw me over regardless of what team I'm on to get a power, or should I just play it safe because the power is crap? Thinking about it a bit more, I think most people wouldn't bother to do anything but craft food\beer. There was a possibility for someone to get a vig shot, but it required a pile of actions to unlock it. Enough that it'd take combined efforts to get it, and because of all those actions it'd show up late game. Handing out a late game vig gun to a random person seems overpowered.

Lastly, the reason that the powers were deliberately crap was that there was suppose to be a noble class that had the good powers. How it would have worked was that at the start there would be a noble with a good power, and then at night he'd pick another player to be a noble. That player would get a good power, and then he'd also pick another player to join the noble class who would also get a good power. In total, there'd be 5 nobles, and the seer would be the last of the 5. However, the nobles would not be able craft, so in a way they're important assets and in a way they're dead weight. They'd have a private board, and joining the nobility would not be announced.

But is that fun for the non-noble players? Having to make a stupid and repetitive choice just to support a secret upper class? Doubt it. Plus, if a wolf gets picked to join the nobility, then obviously all the rest of the nobles will be wolves. Yeah, no way that could be exploited!

--

Anyway, the reason I'm rambling on about this is that I hadn't gotten back to people on it, and I'm really starting to doubt the whole thing. Maybe just make it vanilla with df theming, and very minor rule changes if any.

sphenodont wrote:Okay, just brainstorming a bit. I'm thinking a Final Destination-style game. For those unfamiliar with the movies (which are oh-so-horrible but oh-so-fun), basically a bunch of people are Supposed To Die in a terrific accident, but thanks to the actions of one person who has seen the event in premonitory dreams, they don't. What follows is Death seeking to collect his due, and everyone who escaped ends up dying anyway.

I'm not going to claim to understand proper Quantum, but there's a quantum element to this, in that any of the Survivors could be the person who had the dreams and prevented the original tragedy. Players will generate a list of the order that people died at the start of the game, which will be use to ultimately determine the True Seer. (There will be some gaps in the list to allow some interactivity once the game starts.)

The Wolf faction does not exist, exactly. One player will be Death, who will choose to kill someone each night. Depending on the total number of players, there will also be one or two "true" survivors, people who weren't going to die in the accident anyway. These people want the Survivors to die so that the timeline can go back to normal and so paradox can be avoided.

Every Survivor will basically have a daily guardian angel action, which they will use to keep their friends safe. Of course, in the Final Destination Universe, trying to help someone invariably leads to them getting killed. I haven't worked it out exactly, but I'm thinking that the people who get "helped" become eligible for killing by Death.

There is no conventional lynch, but instead, the players can team up to try to vanquish Death. If greater than fifty percent of the players can agree on a specific player to kill, they will, but anything less will be ignored.

The game ends when the True Seer is resolved (and then killed), or when Death is eliminated.

So what would be in place of a conventional lynch? Players need to vote on something during the day. Also, hmm the intention is for players to kill other players through eligibility? Hmm.

And well, if Death is only one player, then his death would be just luck? I think you would need measures to stop Death from being dead too early in the game. Some ideas woild need to be thrown in to like, avoid players thinking they have something to do once they know they are not the true Seer.

rekard wrote:So what would be in place of a conventional lynch? Players need to vote on something during the day. Also, hmm the intention is for players to kill other players through eligibility? Hmm.

And well, if Death is only one player, then his death would be just luck? I think you would need measures to stop Death from being dead too early in the game. Some ideas woild need to be thrown in to like, avoid players thinking they have something to do once they know they are not the true Seer.

It's not fully fleshed out yet. Just had the idea today, so wanted to get my thoughts out before I left work (and forgot everything). There is a lynch, it just requires more than a plurality of the votes.

There would be some allowance for Death being terminated too early, probably with him jumping into the body of a remaining "True" survivor. (Obviously, need to work out the terminology.) Death would know who his allies are, and would probably reach out to them. There would be some limited PM ability, at the least. It's probably best to think of Death as the pack alpha and the True Survivors as the other wolves. Maybe they should be considered assistant Reapers. Anyway, Death would be the one to decide who Dies, and if Death is killed and his understudies are still around, they would take over.

Trying to figure out a "cooperative" game in very much a Chtulu-esque / Arkham Horror approach, where the wolves change every day, and the humans are trying to kill them. I think that people will be divided into groups with subfora (not necessarily teams, no particular team goals - at this point), and the seer(s) will get a "current wolves in <seered> group" count for the upcoming day. Subfora are really meant to be a ~limited replacement for PMs that automatically include all of the players.

My main question is, if everyone's aiming for a human victory, how do I make it so that the people randomly chosen as wolves for the day have motivation to play optimally (ie, maul outed seers, etc.)? Obviously, no public chatter about who the wolves are for that day, no voting on fellow wolves, etc.

Still in brainstorming mode, but I think it could be interesting. Debating whether it needs an Everyone's Special aspect or not (would rather avoid that if I can).

Admetus wrote:The obvious angle on that would be to do an Inception game. I know you played in Archer, so I'm guessing you want to find a different way?

Yeah - the thing about Archer is that there were still a predefined set of wolves that were separate from the "daily" wolves, and the daily wolves were, in fact, still hunting the real wolves just like the daily humans were. I'm aiming for a game where everyone playing wins or loses together, similar to the Arkham Horror board-game experience. I may not be able to get that, though - as I said, just brainstorming.

You could perhaps work it as a team game, framed in the context of a vanilla-ish game?

Lets say you split up all the players into three teams: Werewolves, Vampires, Cultists(possibly excepting a pure-human role like the Seer or GA)

Day 1, the Werewolf team has the maul. Everyone else is on the human team.Day 2, the Vampire team has the maul. Everyone else is human.Day 3, it's the Cultists.Day 4, cycle repeats (or perhaps it's reshuffled so it's not predictable but still fair-ish)

If it's your team's day and you hit parity with the humans, you win. If it's not your team's day and you eliminate the entirety of the active team, you win (i.e. if Day 12 is a vampire day and the vampires are dead, everybody alive wins).

Haven't really thought through balance implications of that, just an idea that popped into my head over lunch.

I kind of assume Okaros is out to backstab me until proven otherwise. - DOM

Okaros wrote:You could perhaps work it as a team game, framed in the context of a vanilla-ish game?

Lets say you split up all the players into three teams: Werewolves, Vampires, Cultists(possibly excepting a pure-human role like the Seer or GA)

Day 1, the Werewolf team has the maul. Everyone else is on the human team.Day 2, the Vampire team has the maul. Everyone else is human.Day 3, it's the Cultists.Day 4, cycle repeats (or perhaps it's reshuffled so it's not predictable but still fair-ish)

If it's your team's day and you hit parity with the humans, you win. If it's not your team's day and you eliminate the entirety of the active team, you win (i.e. if Day 12 is a vampire day and the vampires are dead, everybody alive wins).

Haven't really thought through balance implications of that, just an idea that popped into my head over lunch.

Doesn't that kind of subvert the whole "everyone wins or loses together" part?

DastardlyOldMan wrote:I'm aiming for a game where everyone playing wins or loses together, similar to the Arkham Horror board-game experience. I may not be able to get that, though - as I said, just brainstorming.

Here's how I think I would do it:

(1) Every day, someone new becomes "The Sociopath";

(2) There are then three possible outcomes:

(a) The Sociopath achieves a solo victory;(b) Everyone but The Sociopath gains a team victory;(c) Neither side wins, and The Sociopath is killed or demoted to non-Sociopath;

Kind of, yes, but it does allow everyone to be both human and wolf/vampire/cultist/deepone throughout the course of the game. Thinking on it more, though, I would worry a bit about it degenerating purely along team lines. Hrm.

I kind of assume Okaros is out to backstab me until proven otherwise. - DOM

What if the wolves coordinate in anonymity, through masked accounts? They don't get to know who the other wolves are. To keep them on task, you'd need to give them two ways to achieve victory: 1. Standard wolf fare, eliminate the humans down to parity (make way for the old ones). Or 2. Unveil the conspiracy and kill the other wolves until they are the only one left (i.e., a lone wolf becomes human and humans win).

So wolves are trying to both kill humans and lynch wolves.

I don't know if that's actually balanced or if the wolves have enough motivation to hunt humans, but I'm not sure how else to encourage them to play both sides.

PJ's general resignation towards fate is good enough. -OkarosThen he went and shot himself, saved me and got himself lynched because of it. You magnificent fool! -Mister E. Meat

DastardlyOldMan wrote:Trying to figure out a "cooperative" game in very much a Chtulu-esque / Arkham Horror approach, where the wolves change every day, and the humans are trying to kill them. I think that people will be divided into groups with subfora (not necessarily teams, no particular team goals - at this point), and the seer(s) will get a "current wolves in <seered> group" count for the upcoming day. Subfora are really meant to be a ~limited replacement for PMs that automatically include all of the players.

My main question is, if everyone's aiming for a human victory, how do I make it so that the people randomly chosen as wolves for the day have motivation to play optimally (ie, maul outed seers, etc.)? Obviously, no public chatter about who the wolves are for that day, no voting on fellow wolves, etc.

Still in brainstorming mode, but I think it could be interesting. Debating whether it needs an Everyone's Special aspect or not (would rather avoid that if I can).

DastardlyOldMan wrote:Trying to figure out a "cooperative" game in very much a Chtulu-esque / Arkham Horror approach, where the wolves change every day, and the humans are trying to kill them. I think that people will be divided into groups with subfora (not necessarily teams, no particular team goals - at this point), and the seer(s) will get a "current wolves in <seered> group" count for the upcoming day. Subfora are really meant to be a ~limited replacement for PMs that automatically include all of the players.

My main question is, if everyone's aiming for a human victory, how do I make it so that the people randomly chosen as wolves for the day have motivation to play optimally (ie, maul outed seers, etc.)? Obviously, no public chatter about who the wolves are for that day, no voting on fellow wolves, etc.

Still in brainstorming mode, but I think it could be interesting. Debating whether it needs an Everyone's Special aspect or not (would rather avoid that if I can).

Will there be a backstabbing shoggoth?

There have been a lot of great moments in these games, but the interaction between ICB/dferr and the shoggoth tank was great... I think dferr really did descend into madness a bit there.

edit: And I will give you mad props, twdog, for running that game... it was hella fun.

Rictus wrote:There have been a lot of great moments in these games, but the interaction between ICB/dferr and the shoggoth tank was great... I think dferr really did descend into madness a bit there.

edit: And I will give you mad props, twdog, for running that game... it was hella fun.

Glad you liked it! From a technical perspective, that game had serious problems, but most people seem to have liked it, so I'm happy about that. Still, between the bugginess and launch problems, it's like if Paradox or Obsidian GM'd a game.

For a just a moment, before I saw it was my own game, I thought "OMG!!! A LOVECRAFT INFOCOM GAME!!! HOW DID I MISS THIS!!!!! OMG OMG OMG OMG SQUEEEEEEE ... wait, that's my game. well, shit." I thought that for a just a moment, and in just a moment you broke my heart.

you bastard

----

Speaking of bugginess, tonight I find myself having to install a Win 98 VM to play some old games. My god, I've forgotten what what a pile of crap it was. Of course, if I'm really going to dump on 98 I should fire a up copy of System 7 and get really smug and condescending

So given that I am rapidly climbing the list of future GMs I want to open up an idea for a TWG I have had to the floor for comments. I always like the two villages game scenario and thought the atmosphere while playing it was fantastic. The intriguie over the actions of the other village was always great. I have never felt games have fully capitalised on this in the past. Some games have the villages competing. Some have them indifferent over the other. I wanted to make it feel more threatening though. To make the threat posed by the other village to induce rampant fear into the game. I eventually came up with, what I shall call, The Invasion TWG.

It is a two villages scenario. Two TWGs running in parallel. There are humans. There are wolves. Standard stuff. However, each village has a ruler. He can be a mayor, king, whatever fits the theme. He has the totally awesome ability to call for an invasion of the other village and automatically end the game. There will be a decisive battle and the village with more villagers wins. The wolves in each village, though, are spies from the enemy village. They are in a secret wolf forum with the Master of Whispers from their home village. With this they can relay information about the opposing village back to the home front. It is forbidden to quote anything into this forum. Information must be conveyed second hand, like they are meeting secretly in the woods. The Master of Whispers then, will know when is the right time to invade in order to win. However, he must worry about how he gives this information to the King without any spies seeing. Or perhaps the spies will convince the King that they are the Master of Whispers.

The power roles then areKingMaster of WhispersThe Hand of the KingThe ChampionThe SpiesLovers (maybe. I don't know if they work)

To stop a village lynching a spy day 1 and immediately ending the game, you cannot invade until day 4. When an invasion is called for, the invaded team will be notified. They then have some time to prepare a vote for who shall be the Champion. As will the invading village. The Champions are selected in the event of a tie. If there is a tie, the Champions will play a 1v1 game of something. Maybe Chess. I haven't decided.

The Hand of the King replaces the King if he dies. If the Hand and King both die, you cannot invade and must wait to hopefully defend against invasion.

Or do you mean that the spymasters and spies have some separate forum where they can't see the day to day coordination stuff? If so, why bother at all having their other forum? Do they have any kind of communications handicaps besides not quoting?

It just seems like the moment there's a difference in human count after Day 4, the spymaster will say in the public forum "role claim, attack to win." The King role is kind of just a formality. I know a spy could fake claim, but that just pushes it back by one day while you lynch the guy to get his role card (and the spymaster adds a buffer of 1 human to compensate).

Can the attack be delayed a bit? Like, you have to go through one more night of lynch but you're committed to the attack?

If you can build in some risk to the attack, like one more lynch before attacking, would you say that the attacking team wins ties because they took the risk?

Instead of that, perhaps a tie repels but doesn't destroy the attacking town, who must wait 2 days before announcing another attack, while the defending team could counterattack after just one day?

What if you take the King out as a role and make the decision to attack the equivalent of a no-lynch vote?

i.e. Instead of voting for someone to lynch, the players have the option of voting "Invade". If "Invade" the leading option, no lynch happens for that team (but maul still happens) and the next day is invasion-day?

You could still have the "King" around for flavor of course.

I kind of assume Okaros is out to backstab me until proven otherwise. - DOM

It's two TWGs running at the same time but you only have access to one. The spies have access to a secret forum in addition to the normal day thread like normal wolves. The Master from the other village can also see his own team's spies as well as his own day thread.

I get what you are saying about the role claiming which is why I originally had the idea that the spies could pm a single word to the Master every night. It would make it a bit more interesting and uncertain. There is also the possibility that any role claiming is WoGable.

Buffers to add risk can certainly be added and I do like the idea of a tie working in that manner.

What if you take the King out as a role and make the decision to attack the equivalent of a no-lynch vote?

i.e. Instead of voting for someone to lynch, the players have the option of voting "Invade". If "Invade" the leading option, no lynch happens for that team (but maul still happens) and the next day is invasion-day?

You could still have the "King" around for flavor of course.

I actually really like this idea. It would give the spies some counter play to the invasion. It also takes away the fear I had that the person playing the King may get blamed for losing and no one finds that fun.

Snake wrote:I actually really like this idea. It would give the spies some counter play to the invasion. It also takes away the fear I had that the person playing the King may get blamed for losing and no one finds that fun.

It also provides a bit of a natural counterbalance since the attacking side is giving up a lynch to make the attack happen. The defenders still get *their* lynch that day, after all, and what if they lynch one of their spies and even things up?

This plus the spies having a vig shot would likely make it very dangerous to push for invasion before everyone is reasonable sure (nearly) all the spies on your side have been wiped out, but still viable if the game is large enough. For example, if there are 3 spies per team killing 2 spies early on one side when there are 0 dead spies on the other side makes for a very tempting "invade" option if that information becomes widely known. But that only really holds up if there are enough spies to allow for one side establishing a more-than-one-day lead on the other.

I kind of assume Okaros is out to backstab me until proven otherwise. - DOM

So, I have an idea for a game that mixes things up a bit while keeping some of the basic structure of a WW game.

There are no teams, no PM's, and everybody starts out as vanilla. There is a traditional lynch vote every day and there will be one or more mauls. Every day there will be a game, the outcome of which depends largely on the decisions of the players. The winner(s) get a reward while the losers and non-participants are maul-eligible.

The rewards are heavily biased towards either lynch immunity or one-shot powers that discourage future lynches; this helps protect the players who are strong in these games since they'll be priority lynch targets. Discussion of most of the games will be permitted and players are encouraged, if not outright expected, to lie and mislead other players.

I would try to split the games between analysis-friendly games that rely heavily on prediction and metagaming, and more straightforward games that are more about deception and making the optimal choice relative to the decisions of other players. An example game would be the following, which would be run on the first day since it's pretty simple (ie, no deception):

Today we are going to play Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock. All of you have been randomly paired off, and the winners will be maul-immune tonight and lynch-immune tomorrow.

There's a couple twists, though. You don't know who your opponent is going to be. You'll also make your choice publicly and you cannot change it once you make the post.

And a more analysis-heavy one. Note that players who submit a number greater than 100 are ~guaranteed to be safe from the maul, but they also can't win. This should make the average much harder to predict.

Before EOD, each of you must PM me a number greater than 0 and less than 200.

The player that is closest to HALF of the mean value of those submissions, without going over, will win a substantial prize and maul immunity. The closest player that is ABOVE that value is maul-eligible along with anyone who doesn't PM me before EOD. Everybody else is safe.